QUICK FIX

Congress passed the spending measure President Donald Trump has resolved to sign before declaring a national emergency for the border wall. Jeff Bezos abandoned Long Island City HQ2 plans. And we're barreling into the final day of HIMSS, with a closing address from ONC's Don Rucker. Here’s what else we’ve got:

—CMMI’s new emergency treatment experiment: One of CMMI head Adam Boehler’s first payment models — known as ET3 or Emergency Triage, Treat, and Transport — will pay providers for telehealth treatment.

—Upcoming anti-vaxxing hearings: Two congressional committees announced hearings on the topic, and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) pressed social media giants on their role in spreading misinformation about vaccines.

—FTC negotiating privacy fine with Facebook: The agency is negotiating a multi-billion dollar fine that could potentially settle its investigation into Facebook’s privacy practices, The Washington Post reports.

eHealth Tweet of the day: Sue Schade@sgschade My newest #HIMSS19 advice. You can’t do, hear, see everything. If you came with a few clear goals and meet some or all of them, consider your time and trip successful. My feet hurt in spite of wearing flats but meeting my goals. One more day. @StarBridgeHIT

Driving the Day

CMMI’S NEW EMERGENCY TREATMENT EXPERIMENT: A new payment model from CMMI will test new ways for Medicare to pay for emergency care after someone dials 911, including through telehealth, our colleague Rachel Roubein reports. It’s one of the first payment models to be released by the CMS Innovation Center under Director Adam Boehler, who took over last April and who has signaled his intention to eliminate fee-for-service payments at HIMSS.

The voluntary payment experiment, known as ET3, offers a new way for health care providers to conduct emergency triage, treatment and transportation. CMS will pay participating ambulance teams to transport patients to hospital emergency departments and other settings like a primary care physician’s office or to provide care on the scene under the supervision of a qualified practitioner or through telehealth.

Medicare now only pays for emergency ambulance trips to hospitals, skilled nursing facilities or dialysis centers. That means most beneficiaries are likely to be brought to a hospital after a 911 call, according to CMS.

…Back at HIMSS, other HHS officials continued to dissect the dual CMS and ONC interoperability and information blocking proposals. ONC head Don Rucker argued that the proposed API standards could invite a host of new players into health IT, potentially preventing health care providers from being locked in to a single vendor. (He spoke at an event hosted by the Bipartisan Policy Center Thursday; BPC’s recent report on interoperability served as the basis for the discussion.)

“We’re trying to move health care back into the modern computing environment, where there are hundreds of thousands of people capable of helping us, as opposed to having to rely on very narrow [sets of products] that are more of an art form,” he said.

…Despite this week's proposals, he noted that “most of the interoperability work really does happen in the private sector,” and that ONC and the federal government’s role is simply in “facilitating the rough spots.” It’s not realistic to assume that “some agency is going to do a rule and solve all our problems.”

IN CONGRESS

UPCOMING ANTI-VAXXING HEARINGS: Two congressional panels have announced hearings on vaccine-preventable diseases amid the ongoing measles outbreaks. The House Energy and Commerce’s oversight subcommittee will convene on Feb. 27, and the full Senate HELP Committee will hold its hearing on March 5 .

HELP Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and ranking member Patty Murray (D-Wash.) last week sent a letter to the CDC and HHS asking about efforts to boost vaccination rates and dispel hesitation, our colleague Sarah Owermohle reports.

“The reemergence of vaccine-preventable diseases, such as measles, presents a serious public health threat, especially for those who rely on herd immunity,” Rep. Diana DeGette, (D-Colo.) chair of the oversight panel, said in a statement.

…Rep. Adam Schiff thinks social media is a key factor, our POLITICO colleague John Hendel reports. The House Intelligence chairman pressed Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai over anti-vaccine misinformation he said circulates on their social networks, which include Instagram and YouTube.

“Repetition of information, even if false, can often be mistaken for accuracy, and exposure to anti-vaccine content via social media may negatively shape user attitudes towards vaccination,” Schiff wrote.

Google and Facebook have spent years trying to battle misinformation on their platforms, and they and other tech giants have struggled to come up with systems that can vet falsehoods and misapprehensions. Social media messages that spread debunked claims about the dangers of vaccines — and minimize the danger of not vaccinating against childhood diseases — could constitute “a direct threat to public health” and undo “progress made in tackling vaccine-preventable diseases,” added Schiff.

Schiff asked the companies whether medically inaccurate content violates the tech companies’ terms of service and what actions the companies are taking or considering. He also asked if they accept paid ads from anti-vaccine activists and what the companies might do to prevent anti-vaccine messages from spreading “either algorithmically or as a suggested search result.”

FTC NEGOTIATING PRIVACY FINE WITH FACEBOOK: In other Facebook news, the Federal Trade Commission is negotiating a multi-billion dollar fine with the social networking platform that could potentially settle the FTC’s investigation into its privacy practices, The Washington Post’s Tony Romm reports.

SENATE COMMERCE LINING UP PRIVACY WITNESSES: The Senate Commerce Committee has lined up three backers of federal privacy legislation to testify Feb. 27 during its hearing on privacy policy principles, John reports.

The witness list so far includes Michael Beckerman, president of tech trade group the Internet Association; Randall Rothenberg, CEO of Interactive Advertising Bureau, an industry group for digital advertisers; and former Democratic FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz, now a Davis Polk partner who represents ISPs through the 21st Century Privacy Coalition. Other witnesses will likely be added.

All three advocate for federal privacy legislation, consistent with what panel Chairman Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) has encouraged. Wicker has said he wants a bill signed into law by year's end, in part to override California privacy rules set to go into effect in 2020.

IAB has repeatedly warned that California’s law could mean problems for the digital advertising industry, devoting a section of its website to the state law and joining a recent letter to California Attorney General Xavier Becerra outlining concerns. The Internet Association too has touted privacy principles that would preempt state law. Leibowitz, meanwhile, was among former FTC commissioners who met with Senate Commerce behind closed doors last month to discuss privacy.

HEALTH IT BUSINESS WATCH

SALESFORCE LEAVES THE INTERNET ASSOCIATION: Salesforce has left the Internet Association, becoming the second tech company this year to separate from one of the industry’s most prominent trade groups in Washington, our POLITICO colleagues Margaret Harding McGill and Steven Overly report.

Salesforce, which provides business-to-business software, was a founding member of the Internet Association when it launched in 2012. The trade group has been active on issues like privacy regulation, net neutrality and legal immunity for websites over user-generated content.

As we’ve reported for eHealth, Salesforce has been expanding its reach in health with cloud-based software that health care providers and payers can use to analyze their patients.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has been an outspoken proponent of federal data privacy rules and a critic of how other Silicon Valley companies handle user data.

IBM ENTERING RISK SCORE GAME: IBM Watson Health and MIT’s Broad Institute are partnering to help clinicians score patients for their risk of cardiovascular disease, tapping genomic and clinical data and artificial intelligence. It's a three year project.